A rustic redo: Family’s past brings unique look to outdoorsman’s retreat southwest of Beaver Lake – Omaha World-Herald

A 60-pound stuffed beaver isnt your usual living room dcor.

But for outdoorsman Daron Smith, it fits.

His 3,700-square-foot home southwest of Beaver Lake, Nebraska, is a blend of his lifelong passion for the outdoors and his fondness for mementos from his familys past.

I really love the rustic feel of my place with the barn wood and, obviously, the animals Ive acquired over the years, Smith says. And I love the history thats reflected in the dcor.

The hunter and fisherman made the outdoors his first priority upon purchasing the eight-acre property in 2000. He replaced a barn, put in a pond and brought in a half-million pounds of rock, including boulders, to give the landscape a northern Minnesota look and feel.

He planted wildflowers in the woods behind his home and created another acre of wildlife habitat to the west, clearing a lot of trees in the process.

My career should have been in landscaping and habitatmanagement, says the 52-year-old former owner of Better Business Equipment Co., as he gazes out on the jewel of his work, a 100-by-80-foot pond.

He has since expanded the original parcel to 50 acres and added a nearby 160-acre farm, which hes turning into a mix of crops and more wildlife habitat.

Turkey, coyote, raccoon, possum and all kinds of birds are familiar visitors to his home.

Im close enough to get to Omaha, he says, but I feel like Im in the middle of the wilderness.

His focus turned inside after selling the family business in 2015. As with many home remodels, it started small.

He wanted to redo a three-season porch that had paper-thin windows and a leaky roof and walls. But he also liked the idea of opening up the area to the kitchen. Soon, the kitchen was down to its studs.

Three weeks near completion of the four-month project, he remodeled the main-floor bath.

I just decided to go whole hog, Smith explains.

He provided 30 percent of the ideas, and gave Libby Pantzlaff of Creative Interiors by Libby credit for the other 70. Mike Sassen of Advance Design and Construction also had creative input.

Smith wanted to feel like he was sitting outside, so he sought a rustic feel in the hearth room, with barn wood walls, slate flooring and a great view of the pond and woods.

Along the way the project took on an historic bent, something he hadnt originally planned.

A wall and backsplash in his new kitchen feature reclaimed Egyptian pavers used in the 1920s to build the Lincoln Highway, which snaked down Dodge Street on its way from New York to San Francisco. Smith and Pantzlaff spent a day reclaiming them from a brick pile at A&R Salvage and Recycling Inc.

The marble counters are done in what Pantzlaff jokingly calls a mossy oak pattern, because it reminds her of camouflage.

I think its just got character, Smith says.

The frames around the windows in the hearth room and kitchen feature old-growth oak from a western Nebraska barn. Smith estimates the wood could be nearly 200 years old.

In the hearth room, a wall made from reclaimed wood from nearby Murray, Nebraska, has become home to many family heirlooms. Smith points out a log chain and skillet that traveled from Illinois to Kansas in a covered wagon.

I had a pile of this stuff, and I said, Libby, make it look good.

The only time Smith balked, then relented, was when Pantzlaff suggested using reclaimed corrugated metal from a barn for the hearth room ceiling. Now hes glad he went along with the idea.

As an homage to what Smith calls the hunting that runs in his blood, racks from two deer and a 600-pound elk adorn another wall in the hearth room. A spot over the new coat closet is reserved for one of the bobcats that frequents his farm.

The beaver is homegrown, too. It lived in the creek behind his house. When it began killing off many of the smaller trees on the property, Smith trapped it and had it mounted.

It has definitely become a conversation piece with Smiths guests.

Most of them are pretty shocked, Smith says. Who has a beaver?

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A rustic redo: Family's past brings unique look to outdoorsman's retreat southwest of Beaver Lake - Omaha World-Herald